Re-Regulating the Media in the U.S.

[AbramIsaac]

What's your opinion on regulating the airwaves in the United States?

It's no secret that the media in the U.S. is oftentimes alarmist, and/or one-sided. With political commentators instead of journalists, cable news outlets enjoy the ability to keep a constant flow of information that does not have to be neutral, nor does it have to be verified as factual.

We used to have a Fairness Doctrine in the United States. It required broadcasters to provide a public service in order to be allowed to operate. That's how the 6 o'clock news became so ubiquitous. It also prevented television and radio providers from broadcasting news that was false or misleading. That's the part that the pundits at Fox News would probably have the most trouble with.

Beyond those issues, the Fairness Doctrine also limited how much of the airwaves a single company could own. What we have now allows a handful of companies to completely dominate a market. Such is the case with Talk Radio. Something like 90% of talk radio is right-wing content, and nearly all of those content providers are owned by only a few companies.

The reason all of this is important is because the press is key in the way our politics works. If the press is lying, or existing primarily as an outlet to a particular ideology, the public will misinformed. An ignorant public elects ignorant politicians, who have to essentially serve the dysfunctional press in order to get reelected.

That's why people call the media the 4th branch of the government. I would argue that the media controls the outcome of elections more than the other way around though. Large companies are able to influence public opinion and elections, allowing them to ultimately write their own rules.

So...are you for the Fairness Doctrine?

[MikeNUFC]

Well, speaking from the UK, the power the media have is insane. In terms of newspapers, every paper has a slant; right now, especially with the recent riots, either very, very conservative or very, very liberal. There's nothing like Fox News here, but it's funny how the left criticise the BBC for being too right, and the right criticise the BBC for being too left. It's all how you perceive it. Speaking as a liberal, I find they are relatively fair in general, although do favour whoever is in power.

I find the media with the most influence is coming from the right as they (on the whole) go for sensationalist headlines which create stronger emotion and reaction.

It's a massive problem. But as long as you have 'columnists', who are bound to have their own opinion, you're going to have bias reporting, especially in the papers.

I would be in favour of that doctrine, especially in terms of it's second point - I think limiting how much a company can own is vital in create balanced talk/opinion and, in the long term, a more balanced view.

[AbramIsaac]

Jesus, I wish our news outlets were as sensible and calm as the BBC.

Have you ever watched some of the crazy shit that is put on the air here? When Glenn Beck still had his show, he would constantly be warning of impending doom. FEMA death camps and shit like that. I mean, for real? And people genuinely believed it.

My understanding is that the UK has some form of Fairness Doctrine in place, along with Australia and Canada. It generally makes for a better press. I'm sure there would be room to abuse it though.

Your right-wing media may often be the same as ours, in terms of the source. I know News Corp owns The Sun, along with some other outlets.

I've seen some pretty wild sensationalist headlines from the UK, though. Crazy things about reefer addicts killing their children in the headline, only to mention down towards the bottom that they were also schizophrenic meth addicts.

Overall though, I would say that you guys are leagues ahead of us with BBC alone.

[MikeNUFC]

Didn't Glenn Beck compare the Labour students murdered in Norway to Hitler Youth? (ironically, this may have just been me reading a sensationalist headline myself!!). But yeah, I've seen enough of Beck and others (Riley) on Youtube and find them astonishing, in terms of the things they seem to get away with.

The Sun has gone madly right-wing in the last year or so (since it changed allegiances to Conservative - it basically moves to whatever the public is swaying towards) although it's always been a fairly right wing paper. It's basically the gospel of twisting stories/statistics - it's hilarious how hypocritical it is though, so I can't really take it seriously - it'll say 'The Sun Campaigns to Eradicate Perverts In Communites' then will have 'Miley Cyrus Nip Slip' photo on the page opposite..

The Daily Mail is much worse as it dresses up as a broadsheet but it just incredible when it comes to it's racist, homophobic scare mongering and defending of the police (when Charles De Demenez was innocently shot dead by police it ran a headline of 'Why Did He Run?' - absolute sickening). If you've ever seen their webiste and it's comments section, you'll know why it's the butt of so many liberal satirists jokes.

The BBC was set up to be impartial and sticks to it quite fairly. I honestly find it crazy how much power and influence Fox News holds - that's Murdoch for you - although - finally - his reign of political power seems to be coming to an end in the UK with the phone hacking scandal (which has been overshadowed of late by Winehouse, Norway and riots).

[EminemBase]

To be honest, I've given up on society at large given our structure.

Evil and injustice will always prevail in a capitalist structure, full stop.

It's not new laws or theories of fairness we need to put into practice, as the overwhelming evil and greed and corruption of the structure remains and will eventually eat away at whatever new justice you put into the plant pot. It's the system that needs changing, how we work, period.

I can't recall his name and I'm too lazy to go search this but somebody else can if they want, and verify it... it was something like, the ex-director of the CIA who retired in the 80s I think maybe, he said that every significant media corporation was OWNED by the CIA.

Governments and corporations are inherently linked and everything is about power and wealth. Even the medical industry, there is no corner of morality or society left untouched by the greed.

Many people are naive and do consider mainstream news to be a 'source' when in fact, it rarely is. The levels of corruption or misinformation vary from country to country and the UK isn't as bad as the US but nonetheless, there's so many underlying conflicts of interests from every corner of the media and everything is linked to everything else... it just, it can't ever be just.

So what I do is, if I'm interested in a story or event now, I hear of the basic information and then I seek out multiple sources, and I compile evidence that complements itself with other evidence and I independently attempt to get to the truth of the matter.

Anybody who thinks the truth of the matter with most news stories, or any news story which has the potential to be exploited financially or politically... anybody who thinks they're getting truth or reality in these areas is simply naive and foolish.

The Internet is the saviour for the independent among us. And now social networking, Twitter especially, is taking the news out of the hands of those in power. The news is now in the people's hands as if something happens in say Chicago... and a hundred people in Chicago see X event and all tweet the same or roughly the same thing... this is effectively one hundred eye witness accounts all agreeing on the sight of events. As opposed to a single journalist who breaks the story or a single paper or news team, of which other papers then copy from.

I think most mainstream media will be replaced, over time. It's an outdated medium for reporting and was always a suspicious medium for ACCURATE reporting, but when we had no better in terms of resources, it made sense. But now, it doesn't.

[INbfor88]

It's such an issue because regulation of media can quite easily turn into a block against free speech, but at the same time if the public is becoming severely mis-informed because of insane political commentators then there needs to be some sort of control over the content.

You don't want government's legislating too strongly against the media. We've seen in Britain the lengths some 'journalists' go to get a news story (e.g., hacking into phone voicemail), and this is obviously repugnant - but investigative journalism in general is still a necessary tool to keep politicians and others in power, on their toes. We can't take away the freedoms of the press to actually hold people accountable.

I totally agree with EminemBase about Twitter and social media sites, news (real news about what is actually happening, not shock value stories, or straight lies) is starting to be verified by those who would know what's going on (ordinary people where the story occurred). The Fairness Doctrine seems pretty reasonable to me, it just makes sure that people aren't just making stuff up. An independent body - away from the government, and away from the media stations - should be the ones checking and regulating that material. Of course there's always the fear of regulatory capture (i.e., corruption). And increasing bureaucracy. But you can only hope.

Also Al Jazeera is one of the best news sites on the web as far as actually printing non-biased, relevant stories goes.